Mastering the Sword Manual, sweeping across the globe

Next to it were several signed templates, with neat signatures and some even bearing fingerprints.

Old Chen signed it.

Three copies were signed.

One car purchase contract was signed with the car dealership; one loan contract was signed with the finance company; and one franchise transportation agreement was signed with the logistics company.

Three contracts, three parties, three official seals—he didn't think there was anything wrong with them at the time.

On the day he picked up the car, the logistics company delivered his first order.

From Yongding to the neighboring county town, it's over forty kilometers, and the freight cost is 220 yuan.

When he returned from his run, the app showed that the shipping fee had been settled, but he needed to reach 500 yuan to withdraw the money.

He ran around for two more days, collected the five hundred, and successfully withdrew the money.

On the fourth day, I completed two more orders, with shipping costs totaling 340 yuan.

On the fifth, sixth, and seventh days, there were orders every day, and shipping fees were coming in every day.

He thought this was a good idea, so he called his wife back home and told her not to worry, saying that running freight here was alright, better than working in the factory.

On the eighth day, the number of orders began to decrease.

The product listings in the app went from a full page to seven or eight items, and then from seven or eight items to two or three items.

He called the dispatcher, who said it was the off-season and supplies were limited, and told him to wait.

He waited for three days but only managed to get one order.

I waited for three more days, but still no orders came in.

Old Chen went to see the HR manager.

The HR manager said she wasn't in charge of scheduling and gave him the phone number of a scheduling supervisor.

The dispatch supervisor said that the cargo is allocated according to the driver's level. The higher the level, the more orders are assigned. The level is calculated based on the number of orders accepted and the on-time rate. He told the driver to accept more orders, not to be picky about orders, and to arrive on time.

Old Chen said there were no orders to take right now. The dispatch supervisor said there was nothing he could do, everyone was struggling, just wait a little longer.

He waited another week.

I made four orders this week, totaling less than 800 yuan.

Monthly mortgage payment of 1,800 yuan, I pay for my own gas, food, and rent.

Old Chen listed his car online to sell it.

All the callers were car dealers, with the highest offer being 62,000.

His loan principal and interest totaled nearly 90,000 yuan, and even selling his car wouldn't cover the loan amount.

Old Chen went to the logistics company and asked what happened to the promised goods.

He was greeted by a young man in his early twenties, wearing the same blue overalls as the HR manager from before.

The young man flipped through his contract and said, "Brother, your franchise agreement states that 'the company will assist in providing product sourcing information,' not 'the company guarantees a minimum number of orders per day.'"

Assistance provided, but not guaranteed. This is in writing.

Old Chen said that's not what you said back then.

The young man said, "Brother, I'm new here, I don't know what happened back then. But that's exactly what's written in the contract."

Old Chen stood in that park, looking at the dozens of JAC Junling V6s that had been decorated with red ribbons. Some were covered in a layer of dust, some had "This vehicle is for sale" stickers on their doors, and some, like him, were squatting in the driver's seat smoking, the cigarette butts glowing and fading behind the windshield.

He went to see him three more times afterward.

The first time, the young man said he would help him report it to his superiors.

The second time, the receptionist said the person in charge wasn't there and asked him to leave his phone number.

The third time, he stood at the entrance of the logistics company and saw people inside dismantling workstations—partitions were being removed, wires were being pulled out of the floor sockets, and cardboard boxes were being stacked one on top of another, reaching half a person's height.

They didn't even run away.

The company is still there, and the license is still valid; it has simply moved to the neighboring county.

The job posting is still there, only the company name has changed; Jiangnan Logistics has become Tongda Freight.

The monthly salary also changed, from 8,000 to 12,000 to 10,000 to 15,000, and the designated vehicle model changed from JAC Junling V6 to Foton Aoling CTS.

“You need to look carefully at the things you sign,” Zhang Qiliang said, shaking his head after listening to the whole thing. “Come with me.”

As Old Chen followed Zhang Qiliang out of the residential area, he saw a magnificent luxury bus parked on the street – the “Xiao Hongshu” bus, which had been making headlines in Qingping County these past few days.

"Do you dare to sit?" Zhang Qiliang asked.

"I dare! With Brother Ming here, what wouldn't I dare?"

It's more than just daring! As he stepped onto the bus, Old Chen fastened his seatbelt, brimming with excitement.

The next moment, the streetlights outside the window began to fall one by one, forming a ribbon of light. Then the ribbon of light sank down, and the entire Yongding County unfolded beneath our feet.

He could see the signboard of the PongPong Mahjong parlor, white with red lettering, as small as a sesame seed. He could see the tin roof of the vegetable market in the east of the city, and the plastic track of the No. 2 Middle School playground, dark red, appearing gray under the streetlights. He could see his own building, the light still on in the fourth-floor window—he'd forgotten to turn it off when he left.

A gentle breeze blew in through the window, carrying the warmth of an early summer night and the aroma of stir-fried dishes wafting from a distant house.

The bus slowly turned over the county town.

The view outside the window changed from the grid-like urban area to sparse rural roads, and the spacing between the streetlights widened until they became scattered dots of light, like grains of rice scattered on the ground.

The second landing was at the entrance of an old residential area in the west of the city.

A middle-aged man in overalls stood by the guardhouse, his phone screen lit up, his head tilted back, his mouth slightly open.

The bus came to a stop, the door opened, and he boarded in the exact same way Old Chen had done—stepping on with his left foot first, making sure it was firmly planted before daring to step on with his right foot, gripping the door handle with great excitement.

The third landing was next to a gas station.

The person who got on the bus was a young man, about twenty-seven or twenty-eight years old, wearing a white shirt and a badge from a certain courier company pinned to his chest.

After boarding the train, he glanced around the carriage and saw Old Chen and the middle-aged man in the back row. He moved his lips but didn't say anything. He sat down on the other side of the aisle and took off his employee ID card, clutching it in his hand.

Old Chen secretly changed seats and rolled up the electric window: while flying in the sky, Ming was actually floating several meters away and didn't even touch the bus!

What if I accidentally doze off...? I'll only be able to fish it out if I'm closer!

The fourth landing was at the foot of a dormitory building in an industrial park.

A man in his early forties got on the bus carrying a bulging canvas bag, with half of a thermos lid sticking out of the bag.

When he saw Old Chen, he paused for a moment.

Old Chen also saw him.

"Old Zhou?"

Last November, in the Jiangnan Logistics Park, the two men's cars were parked in the same row, each with a red ribbon tied to the front.

On the day Old Chen picked up his car, he was squatting by the tires smoking, and he didn't even take a picture of the cigarette ash that fell on his pants.

Later, Lao Chen ran into him twice more at the entrance of the logistics company. Once he went to demand an explanation, and the other time he went to demand an explanation but failed. The two of them squatted by the flower bed and smoked a whole pack of cigarettes without saying a word.

"Damn...it really was you!" Old Zhou plopped down in the seat next to Old Chen. "You killed them too?"

"Hang up."

“I wrote three.” Old Zhou counted on his fingers, “One for Jiangnan Logistics, one for Tongda Freight, and one for a job recruitment website. That lousy website, its homepage is full of their job postings, they just change their names and go online, the review process is practically nonexistent.”

The middle-aged man in the back row leaned over and said, "I voted for all three of your points."

"I hung up too." came the voice from the deliveryman's badge.

The conversation quickly became lively.

The bus circled repeatedly over Yongding County.

The fifth time, the sixth time, and the seventh time.

More and more people came up; some were wearing work clothes, some were wearing T-shirts, and some were even called out of their homes while still in their pajamas.

There were familiar faces that Lao Chen had seen in the park, group members he had only chatted with in WeChat groups, and unlucky guys who were complete strangers but whose app nicknames he could match up after just three sentences.

The bus began to accelerate.

Old Chen turned his head and counted them once.

Including himself, there are twenty-one.

The carriage was more than half full, with people lining both sides of the aisle. Some people were holding canvas bags in their arms, while others were wringing their seatbelt straps in their hands.

The sea of ​​light outside the window receded, first Yongding, then the villages and towns along the way, patches of lights flashing past the window too fast to discern.

The bus flew over the last piece of farmland.

The dark green field ridges looked like crumpled paper under the moonlight, and the water in the ditches reflected shimmering silver light.

Buildings began to appear on the ground again, and the outline of a factory appeared. First, there were a few scattered buildings, then a large industrial area, and then streetlights, signs, and trucks parked on the roadside.

The bus began to descend.

Old Chen saw the building.

It looks almost exactly like the building of Jiangnan Logistics – beige exterior wall tiles, blue awning, and a stainless steel sign at the entrance with white background and black lettering.

He could see the words on the sign from a distance: Tongda Freight Co., Ltd.

Beneath the sign was a glass door, with lights shining inside, making the cement floor in front of the door appear bluish.

Several rows of brand-new vans were parked in the parking lot, with red ribbons tied to their fronts, and firecracker debris still scattered on the ground.

The bus landed silently in the center of the parking lot, its tires making a dull thud on the ground, like a heartbeat.

The car door opened.

Twenty-one people filed out.

Ahead were those few faces of Old Chen, their teeth clenched in fury.

In the past, almost every time Old Chen saw these faces, he would inevitably go through a process of going from tension to depression, from depression to disappointment, and from disappointment to even greater depression.

This time, even without Ming-ge by his side, Old Chen was still in high spirits!

Besides the vans adorned with red ribbons, the parking lot further ahead was filled with dozens of various official vehicles, including those from city management, red and blue roof lights, market supervision, and so on.

……

Several uniformed officers walked over—there was dark blue from the market supervision department, light blue from the urban management department, dark blue from the express shift, and two in plainclothes.

The person walking at the front was a middle-aged man in his forties, clutching a stack of documents in his hand, which was trembling.

“Mr. Ma,” the middle-aged man’s voice was noticeably faster than normal, “we’ve actually been following this case.”

Zhang Qiliang looked at him.

The middle-aged man opened the document in his hand and took a half step forward.

The header of the A4 paper reads "Case Investigation Progress Report," below which is a densely packed timeline and chain of evidence.

Turning to the second page, there is an organizational chart, starting from Tongda Freight and going up to the two related companies above it, and then up to a trading company registered in a neighboring province. The flow of funds and the shareholding ratio are marked next to the arrows.

The third page is the bank statement, with some accounts' inflows and outflows highlighted in fluorescent colors, the yellow highlights forming a continuous pattern like a net.

"The technical surveillance has been going on for forty-seven days." The middle-aged man turned to the fourth page, which contained a statistical table of call records. The caller and receiver, call duration, and base station location were all listed clearly. "Multiple departments collaborated, including the market supervision bureau, the public security bureau, and the financial affairs office. A joint working group was established last month. The internal case was approved on the 23rd, and the case filing notice is here."

He turned another page.

The document has an official seal in the lower right corner and is dated ten days ago.

"Okay." Zhang Qiliang nodded and took the document.

The middle-aged man walked away, and a man in casual clothes wearing glasses quickly came over and pulled out another stack of documents from his briefcase.

“Mr. Ma,” the visitor opened the documents, his voice slightly slower than the market supervisor’s, but every word sounded pre-planned, “There are two main reasons why no action has been taken yet. First, the chain of evidence is missing a link. After the funds left Tongda Freight, they went into these three companies and then were transferred out again. The process is very complicated and needs to be carefully tracked to ensure that the entire line is locked from beginning to end. Second, the information on the victims has not yet been fully collected.”

He turned to the second half of the document, which was a statistical table with the heading "Summary of Victim Registrations".

More than 30 people have already registered, and each entry is followed by their name, contact information, purchase price, loan amount, and current repayment status.

Some cells are empty and marked "Pending verification".

“Currently, there are about fifty victims in custody, including those present today. But based on bank statements, we estimate the actual number of victims may exceed two hundred, spread across five counties and cities.” The Dali Temple official raised his head, his gaze lingering on Old Chen and the crowd behind him. “If we close in now, once the main culprit is apprehended, the remaining suspects are likely to immediately transfer assets, causing damage to the victims’ legal rights.”

He turned to the last page of the materials.

Property inquiry records—real estate, vehicles, bank accounts, stocks, wealth management products, and insurance—each item is followed by a line of small print indicating the inquiry time and results.